U.S. Veterans Administration Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson, right, and combat veteran Wendy Buckingham salute a color guard during the opening session of the National Order of the Purple Heart National Convention, at which Buckingham serves as Women Veterans Issues Director, in Denver, Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2014. Gibson says more employees will be disciplined as the department sorts out a scandal over long waits for health care and falsified data. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

You’d think it would be a tough crowd.

At the Renaissance Hotel in Denver it’s a sea of purple-clad people, mostly older veterans — the men wearing sharply creased purple and white garrison caps. Medals and insignia almost cover their caps, their lapels. They aren’t in uniforms exactly, but they all wear the same color.

This is the 82nd national convention of the Military Order of the Purple Heart. The Oklahoma man next to me, Frank Casson, says it’s a true hall of heroes tonight. He got his Purple Heart after being blown up by an improvised explosive device in Iraq in 2004.

Gibson hasn’t been at the VA for quite six months. So the current mess isn’t his fault. He served as acting secretary for about two months after Gen. Eric Shinseki was toppled from the post in May by the scandal of ill veterans waiting, sometimes dying, before they could be seen at VA facilities. All the while, administrators falsified waiting times, then reaped performance bonuses for meeting their targets.

“Shinseki was a scapegoat,” Casson said.

Gibson acknowledged the VA was in “the most serious crisis in a generation,” but argued that it presented an extraordinary opportunity to make a compelling case for more resources. He was happy to land in this crisis, he said.

“All I ever wanted was a chance to make a difference,” Gibson said.

But first, he said, the VA had to purge “a corrosive culture of self-protection and retaliation against whistle blowers.”

When he became acting VA secretary, Gibson said, he went to the Phoenix VA hospital, where he met with 75 employees.

“They were often choking back tears,” he said, “about overcoming challenges to care for veterans. What I saw at Phoenix was leadership failure … and chronic under-investment of resources.”

A neurosurgeon there told him that the facility had three X-ray machines, but two weren’t working. Gibson ordered them fixed the next day — a simple fix of updated computer software.

“All it took was for someone to own the issue,” Gibson said.

Gibson has made 14 visits to VA medical centers, including Denver’s on Aug. 6, in the last couple of months.

At San Antonio, Texas, he said, the atmosphere at the VA hospital was one of people brimming with pride in their work and success.

“The irony is the hardest visit for me was San Antonio,” he said. “But for leadership, Phoenix could have looked just like that.”

He promised that the disciplinary actions proposed against six employees involved in scheduling and bonus fraud in Cheyenne and Fort Collins was the first of many such actions.

“A transformation is under way,” he said, “but veterans still wait too long for appointments and the quality of care is not what is should be.”

Electa Draper is the health writer for The Denver Post and has covered every news beat in a 22-year journalism career at three newspapers. She has a bachelor's degree in biology and a master's in journalism.